TEAM MEMBER HIGHLIGHT

Get To Know Julie Mize, MS, CCC-SLP

Speech-Language Pathologist

Julie was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, but then her family moved to Texas when she was four as a result of her father’s service in the Army. She considers herself to be a Texan, since she grew up in a small town by Austin, Texas, called Lampasas (pop. 6,000).

She attended college at Texas A&M University for her undergraduate degree and UT Dallas for her master's degree, which is where she met her best friend, Aly. The two friends decided to move to Denver together in January 2019, just two weeks after graduation. They both love adventure and meeting new people, so Denver felt like home almost immediately.

Julie and her boyfriend, Keenan, have been together for about a year and a half. They have a sweet pup named Willie Bean! He is mixed with Border Collie and Rottweiler, and he's spoiled rotten.

Julie was led to her profession because her sister lives with and manages type 1 diabetes. As Julie explained, “Growing up, I learned how to care for and treat my sister’s high and low blood sugar.” At first, this sparked her interest in nursing and, eventually, led her down the rabbit hole of speech, physical, and occupational therapies. From there, she latched on to speech therapy, because of the wide scope of practice, the fulfillment of serving others, and the pure enjoyment she gets from meeting and treating new clients and their families.

One of her very basic but effective tools is to remind parents to just play and have fun with their child. Because life is so busy, we sometimes forget to sit and play, but Julie tried her best to get parents more connected with their child by participating in play without pressure to imitate or use words. This means not saying, "What's this?"or Say X," for every little thing, but instead, releasing the reins by being silly and goofy, and letting the child take the lead. In play, Julie loves to model onomatopoeias. These are "special effect" sounds like boom, beep, zip, splash, crunch, zoom, etc. When words have lots of theatrics and emotion behind them, children will more likely imitate the fun words (which might be why they will randomly imitate a curse word). Her other favored strategy is to make imitating and using words more fun by using tools to carry your voice, such as talking through paper towel rolls, microphones, puppets, walkie talkies, and a string-and-cup telephone. As Julie states, “Overall, it's really all about toddlers having fun, isn't it?”

Julie during a session with one of her clients

When not working, she enjoys being outside, skiing, hiking, camping, road trips, going to concerts, walking with friends, and playing with her pup. She is the type of person who has both a winter and a summer bucket list and she does her best to see and do everything that the seasons have to offer. Additionally, in her downtime, she likes to cook, explore new music, and read. She has a goal this year to sharpen her Spanish and get into making sourdough bread.

Julie’s dream job would be to own a property in the mountains and take in all of the dogs that need a good home. Essentially 50+ dogs on a farm with plenty of food and room to roam!